Ever wondered why your Spanish Jinetes have no shields?

[Xantan]

Don't you think that it is the way it was in the real life in Medieval Europe? So it is not a bug, but close following historical truth.

Agreed, but only to a point. Playing as France for example, warring with the Italians, should not invalidate an alliance that I have with the Poles just because.

And the issue that I have mainly is because I cannot redo those alliances at all after they've been broken. Even after 100 years of playing. It doesn't work out well, and the lack of ceasefires no matter what you try is extremely frustrating.

I remember a Byzantine Empire campaign that got me a huge amount of trade revenue (over 10-15.000 florins per turn in Constantinople) by having boats everywhere. Even after 60-70 years I couldn't redo the alliances, since one of the factions attacked me and I lost alliances.

[Gilrandir]

Agreed, but only to a point. Playing as France for example, warring with the Italians, should not invalidate an alliance that I have with the Poles just because.

And the issue that I have mainly is because I cannot redo those alliances at all after they've been broken. Even after 100 years of playing. It doesn't work out well, and the lack of ceasefires no matter what you try is extremely frustrating.

I remember a Byzantine Empire campaign that got me a huge amount of trade revenue (over 10-15.000 florins per turn in Constantinople) by having boats everywhere. Even after 60-70 years I couldn't redo the alliances, since one of the factions attacked me and I lost alliances.

If you want something to happen and it doesn't, it doesn't mean it is a bug. The game is honed to be challenging, so the larger you are, the less prone is the AI to let you have allies. But no bugs.

[Xantan]

I agree that the game is supposed to be challenging, to make you think tactically, but diplomacy is bugged.

Look at M2TW - you can fight for 20 years and then factions sue for peace. And you can also resume your alliances with your former allies after another 10 years let's say. This does not happen in MTW. Never happened.

[Gilrandir]

I agree that the game is supposed to be challenging, to make you think tactically, but diplomacy is bugged.

Look at M2TW - you can fight for 20 years and then factions sue for peace. And you can also resume your alliances with your former allies after another 10 years let's say. This does not happen in MTW. Never happened.

Bug is something that goes wrong against the initial scheme. I believe that what you are talking about is the architecture of the game, not a malfunction.

[Xantan]

So in this case, the architecture of the game is bugged, because this is not supposed to happen at all. In the end, it's still a problem of the game.

If only MTW would have been fixed on diplomacy, some more minor bugs fixes + adding some more units (Eastern factions are lacking) and then we would have an impeccably epic game.

Still is epic regardless.

[Gilrandir]

So in this case, the architecture of the game is bugged, because this is not supposed to happen at all. In the end, it's still a problem of the game.

Are you well-versed in the initial design of the game and its real-life implementation that you can claim what was meant to be and what was not supposed to happen?

If only MTW would have been fixed on diplomacy, some more minor bugs fixes + adding some more units (Eastern factions are lacking) and then we would have an impeccably epic game.

If all factions had identical roster there would be no point in choosing them. Different rosters let you try different battle tactics and mirror (with some degree of approximation) the peculiarities of army composition of various real-life medieval polities.

[Xantan]

If all factions had identical roster there would be no point in choosing them. Different rosters let you try different battle tactics and mirror (with some degree of approximation) the peculiarities of army composition of various real-life medieval polities.

S2TW had almost identical rosters and yet it was a very fun game.

It's about the diplomacy mechanics which honestly, in my view, are not ideal. They don't work fully and even by comparison with M2TW we can see that. And also M2TW had problems - I remember trying to play on Very Hard was rather uninspiring since you had to fight sieges every other turn if you played as HRE for example.

[Ludens]

There isn't really much diplomacy in the Total War games anyway(you just attack the weak ones) but i guess changing it would make for a different game. Do you want AIs to stop joining up on you, or maybe have more realistic/historical alliance blocks?
The devs were probably like "we should add a diplomacy screen so that players can spend a bit more time on the strategy part" but that's all, it's not main focus. Maybe even call it cosmetic :)

That's likely true for the first 2 games, though I wouldn't call it cosmetic. Certainly in M:TW, with its crusades and naval trade, diplomacy mattered.

And sometimes the diplomacy was just stupid. The pointless naval wars in M:TW, for example. And in R:TW the A.I. was blatantly programmed to gang up on the player. If you declared war on a faction that was being attacking on multiple sides, its opponents often would make peace instantly. That's pretty immersion-breaking: you think you are making a smart strategic move, but then the A.I. uses a cheatcode.